Living that Whole30 Life Player Style

A Word to the Wise – I Don’t Do Recipes

There’s something you need to know about me. I don’t do recipes. No, really. I don’t do them. If I want to make something I’ve never made before, I’ll find 3-5 recipes for whatever it is, read them, and then I’m done with them. The only reason I’ll refer back to a recipe while I’m actually cooking is if it mentioned that something would be particularly weird/unruly/tricky/different. When I’m cooking, I use my experience in the kitchen and my knowledge of how flavors work together to tweak and adjust as I go until I like where I end up.

I’ve been this way my whole life. It’s all my grandmother’s fault. One of the first things I ever learned to cook was her cornbread dressing that was a Thanksgiving staple. Except, I didn’t really learn how much of what to put together. I learned how the stuffing was supposed to smell, how it was supposed to feel, how it was supposed to look, and (before we added the raw eggs) how it was supposed to taste as we mixed it. If it didn’t smell like there was enough sage, we added more (it never had enough, unless you were my mother – then it always had too much). If it was to dry, we added more broth. If we screwed up and it was too wet, well then we found some more cornbread. I’ve been cooking without rules ever since.

So, sharing my recipes with all of you is going to be a bit tricky for me. Sometimes there won’t be measurements. Sometimes I might instruct you to add something until a dish is a certain color or a certain consistency – it won’t matter how much or how little you add as long as you get the right color or the right consistency. Sometimes I won’t have an exact cooking time – you might have to keep an eye on things.

I promise I’m going to do my absolute best to make the recipes I share with you as clear and easy to follow as possible. But, if for whatever reason something isn’t clear, then please leave me a comment and I’ll figure out how to make it clearer. If you’re trying to follow along and think you’re doing everything right, but somehow the entire meal turns into a disaster – let me know! Maybe I could do better, or at the very least help you figure out what went wrong.

This road goes both ways though. Use my recipes as a basis for your own creations in the kitchen. Don’t be afraid to add more of one spice or less of another. If you screw up, never throw something out without trying to fix it first. So what if your casserole becomes a soup, who cares as long as it tastes good? If you make a tweak to something I’ve shared and it works for you, let me know. I’d love to hear how you’ve made my dish your own!